Review: Hard Candy Glamoflauge Heavy Duty Concealer

Concealers aren't glitzy and they aren't as fun to look at as pretty new eyeshadows or lip colors, but make no mistake: when there's buzz about a new concealer, the frenzy and excitement seem to rank right up there with the latest new eyeshadow or lipgloss collections.

And boy have I heard some buzz about this one! For weeks now, you've been telling me I need to try the new Hard Candy Glamoflauge Heavy Duty Concealer. So I was pretty much doing cartwheels in my living room when the folks at Hard Candy recently sent me a tube:

Hard Candy Glamoflauge Heavy Duty Concealer

(retail: $7 at Walmart)

As we all know by now, Hard Candy is sold exclusively at Walmart, but this product is not yet available on the Walmart website, so you'll need to purchase it in-store for now. This product not only comes with a good-sized tube of concealer, but also with a concealer pencil.

This product comes in three shades: Light, Medium and Dark. The shade I received, Medium, is darker than my skintone, but I can still tell you how it works to even out redness and conceal flaws. The only thing I can't judge it on is how it cancels out/corrects the darkness in my under-eye region, because I really require a more peachy-toned concealer for that area.

So going into it, I pretty much knew that it wasn't going to completely cancel out my under-eye darkness, but I can still give you my opinion on how it works for the rest of my face, and also how it conceals other types of flaws (aside from my under-eye darkness).

Swatches of the concealer and concealer pencil

I tried to capture in the images above that a little of this products goes A LONG way. Seriously, just the tiniest squeeze of this tube is going to yield more than you'll probably need for your under-eye area alone, so squeeze with caution. Ha! I am very impressed by how concentrated this product is, because that means one tube will last you forever. I cannot foresee the average person running out of this in three months, even if you use it every day on say, 75% of your face.

Here are some before-and-afters of my eye region. For the amount of product used for one eye, I only needed the tiniest drop of product. Literally, one tiny squeeze of the tube. The best example I can give is this: if you've ever used a nail art pen, you know how if you take the pen and press down for just one second to make a polka-dot? The amount of polish you'd get from one polka-dot is actually more product than what you'd need from this concealer for ONE eye. I hope that helps paint a better picture for you as to the concentration of this concealer!

Looking at the "After foundation" photo (this was taken after blending the concealer and then topping it with my Physicians Formula powder foundation) you can see that there is still some darkness visible (which I knew was going to be there, as explained earlier) but I hope you can also see that it did a great job of canceling out the redness on the rest of my eye area. Whenever I use concealer, I always have a bit left over and I use that to conceal my eyelids and basically everywhere else around my eye. I was very pleased with how it worked in this capacity.

As for the texture of this product, it's on the thick side, but I found that it blended quite easily for me and I didn't experience any tugging or pulling when applying it to the delicate eye area. I found it extremely easy to work with, especially given how thick it is.

If you have tried Dermablend Smooth Indulgence concealer (which I also own) I can tell you that it's thicker than that product, but it works in quite the same way. In fact, I'd say that it's more concentrated that Dermablend, and more opaque.

After using this concealer every day for five days straight, I can tell you that even though the color match is off for my NC20 skin, I'm very happy with its concealing properties and also the easy of application. The only issue I had with this product was that it seemed a touch drying to my under-eye area when topped with my powder foundation. It didn't settle into my fine lines, but it did make my lines more visible by the end of the day. This could possibly be due to the combination of this concealer mixed with my powder foundation. If you use a liquid or cream foundation, you might have different results. Also, the dryness could be remedied by using a silicone-based face primer first, such as the Hard Candy Sheer Envy face primer, which I reviewed here.

So what fun with this review be if I didn't try this product for its other intended purpose, which is to conceal tattoos? Since I don't have any tattoos, I drew a brown heart on my arm using a permanent marker. For this test, I followed the instructions on the packaging (see above) word for word:

(I apologize in advance for the variance in lighting in the above pictures. The flash on my camera is inconsistent and if I move the camera by just a hair, the flash illuminates a different part of my skin. But I hope you can get the general idea.)

As instructed, I used the concealer pencil to outline my "tattoo" and then fill in the tattoo (pic 3). Then I used a tiny dot of concealer and patted it gently (pic 4). After patting some more, you get what you see in pic 5.

Obviously that didn't do the trick, so in pic 6, as instructed on the packaging, I started with another layer of concealer. In pic 7, you can see that it still didn't completely cover my "tattoo" so in pic 8 I added layer. I like that the packaging clearly states "You may need 2-3 layers depending on color of tattoo" because if I didn't know this, I'd probably be frustrated at this point.

Finally, in pic 9, I blended the third layer and then topped it with a layer of my own powder foundation (I do not own Hard Candy Welcome Matte, which is the recommended product to use for this step). As you can see, my heart "tattoo" is still very slightly visible, but I have to tell you that I was pretty impressed! From a distance, you really couldn't notice it at all.

FINAL VERDICT: I think this is a very good addition to the "heavy duty" concealer category of the drugstore makeup world. I found it easy to work with and extremely concentrated. I think the combination of pencil and concealer would work well for spot-concealing (birthmarks, small tattoos) but for my under-eye area, I didn't find "Medium" to be a good color match, and I also found it a bit too drying by the end of the day. But again, I use powder foundation, so if you use liquid or cream, your results may be different. Also, I think using a silicone-based primer beforehand, such as Hard Candy Sheer Envy, might help keep this from drying. If I could find a better match for my particular skintone, I would DEFINITELY use this on the other areas of my face on a daily basis because it really helped conceal my imperfections and redness, and I found that it lasted all day on my oily skin, no problem. So if you can find the right color match for your skintone, this one might be a keeper.

I hope you found this review useful, and if you have any questions, just leave a comment and I'll do my best to answer them. In the meantime, have you tried Hard Candy Glamoflauge? Do you think it might be a good fit for you based on my experience? I'd love to hear from you!

A sample of this product was given to Nouveau Cheap for editorial purposes, either directly from the manufacturer or from the agency that works on behalf of the manufacturer. All reviews on NouveauCheap.blogspot.com are the honest opinion of its author and editorial samples do not, in any way, affect the outcome of product reviews.